


The Moment You're Free

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [155]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Caretaking, Kidnapping, M/M, Regret, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-19 00:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Q is kidnapped. Bond comes to his aid.





	The Moment You're Free

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Rescue and Regret. Prompts from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator) and [this one](http://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com/promptsnsfw).
> 
> ETA: Now with (way, WAY) more story in the comments, courtesy of [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl) and yours truly.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Q gets out. “Bond, I swear, I wasn’t--”

Bond’s hands are working at the knot around his wrists, rough and fast, but his voice is remarkably gentle. “I’m sure you didn’t.”

Their heads are close, Bond’s temple nearly leaning against his. Bond smells of sweat and blood and Q knows he can’t smell much better: there’s a cut on his chin that hasn’t healed, courtesy of his original kidnap, and he can feel but not see the growing bloom of bruises on his body, on his arms and his thighs and his throat. For a moment, that’s all he’s aware of, the pain, the godawful ache in his head, and he chokes out a sob, feels his cheek cut by tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “God, I’m so sorry.”

Bond’s response is immediate and unexpected; there’s no gloating or scolding, no indignity of _I told you so_. Instead, he stops what he’s doing and sits back, carefully cups a palm around Q’s cheek. “It’s all right,” he murmurs. “I promise. Or it will be once I get this damned thing untied.” He swipes a broad thumb through the wet and the grime. “But I need you to stay right here with me, Q, because the moment you’re free, we’re moving, do you understand?”

No, of course he bloody well doesn’t. He hasn’t slept in two days and they took away his glasses straight away and he’s been beaten for the first time in his life and it terrified him, being in the presence of people who took such delight in his pain, and if Bond wasn’t here, if he’d been at their mercy another few hours, who knows what secrets he might have told just for five minutes of refuge from horror and fear?

“Q.”

He closes his eyes and feels something inside him go limp. They’ve wasted all this time, all this energy, sending Bond in here, and for what? To rescue someone who was a heartbeat from selling it out, knowing they’d bloody well kill him anyway once they’d drained him of all that he knew?

“Q!” Bond says again, his fingers hooking round the back of Q’s neck. “Jesus, we don’t have time for this. Don’t you pass out on me. Don’t you fucking give up. Not now.”

There’s a blackness sinking up towards him, the hands of what feels like oblivion stretched out to welcome him in, and he wonders if Bond will leave him here if he passes out, if he just cannot be moved. Or if his orders are to kill Q if he can’t get him out.

Yes, he thinks, slipping out of the reach of his body, the fierce grip of Bond’s stubborn hand. They would be.

“Goddamn it,” he hears Bond hiss. “Don’t you dare.”

And then, just as the shadows grab him, Bond presses their mouths together and yanks him back.

It’s not a good kiss, nor a sweet one; it’s an anchor, a battering ram--a shove of Bond’s tongue over the stale dry of Q’s lips and a hum, a low sound of something like _please_. But it’s the first sign of tenderness, of real humanity that Q’s known since he walked out of their hotel in Zurich and woke up inside an unfamiliar car, locked in its dark, humid trunk, and he can’t help but lean into it, the warm, desperate well of Bond’s kiss.

After a minute, Bond pulls away but keeps their faces close, their noses just touching.

“You just have to stay awake a little longer. Can you do that for me?”

Q makes his mouth find the word. “Yes.”

He can feel the heat of Bond’s smile, of what no doubt is an insolent grin. “Good.”

In two minutes, he’s free; in five, Bond is manhandling him out of the dank room, past bodies they have to step over but that Q mercifully can't see; and in ten, they’re speeding through a blurry countryside, across hills that are silent and dark.

“Where are we?”

“Galicia. Northwestern Spain.”

“I know where Galicia is,” Q says, irritated, pitching his cheek against the headrest. “They didn’t beat all my sense out of me."

Bond snorts. “Glad to hear it.”

“Where are we going?”

“Someplace safe where we can lay over for a few days. I can’t put you on a plane looking like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve been kidnapped and tied to a chair for three days. Generally that sort of thing makes the customs chaps nervous.”

They hit a ragged patch and the car bounces, much to Q’s dismay; every bounce is a fist, a song that reignites a bruise, and he can’t help the noise that comes out of him, a low, animal groan.

“There’s something for that in the glove box,” Bond says, and Q can hear the strain in his voice. “Take two. And there’s some water, too. Would you drink that for me, please?”

The pills make Q sleepy and the water makes him feel even more parched but it’s a hundred times better than before, a hundred steps back towards feeling human.

“There now,” Bond says, gilded softness. “Why don’t you close your eyes? See if you can get some sleep.”

There’s a weight on Q’s chest, a pleasant one, and another that stretches out over his knee and squeezes, ever so gently. It only makes sense, then, to turn his shoulder into the seat and watch the blur that is Bond, his face lit up by the dials, disappear into the ether as he surrenders to sleep.

“Bond?”

“Hmmm?”

The word is barely a whisper. “Thanks.”


End file.
